Over 600 Hospital Appointments Cancelled In The Midlands Last Month

Wednesday, 1 June 2022 06:44

By Ellen Butler @LN_but

Mullingar Regional Hospital was the worst affected.

A lack of space and staff are forcing hospitals in the midlands to cancel appointments.

That's the view of Professor of Health Systems in DCU, Anthony Staines, responding to new figures from the HSE which show over 600 hospital appointments were cancelled in the midlands last month.

Mullingar Regional Hospital was worst affected, with 299 cancellations in April - followed by 263 in Tullamore, and 101 in Portlaoise.

The data also shows 709 patients have been left waiting longer than 12 hours to be admitted to a midlands hospital so far this year - compared to 828 in all of 2019.

Professor Staines says one way to alleviate the pressure is to provide greater step-down facilities:

In a statement to Midlands 103, a spokesperson from Tullamore Regional Hospital said;

"It is recognised that waiting times for scheduled appointments and procedures have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. While significant work continues to positively impact on waiting times and improve pathways to elective care, acute hospitals have been impacted by operational challenges arising from surges in cases related to the Delta and Omicron variants and last year’s cyber-attack.

"Progress has been achieved with regard to waiting lists at the Midland Regional Hospital Tullamore, however challenges do exist in some specialities.

"The Hospital has made every effort to minimise the impact of the operational challenges such as the pandemic and have included the prioritisation of time-sensitive treatments at all times and the use of a range of measures to increase capacity when feasible, outsourcing, virtual assessments, new clinical pathways and adoption of new technologies.

"The Hospital s implementing the 2022 waiting list action plan, launched in February 2022, and aims to achieve the national targets that no patient is waiting over 18 months by end year. The 2022 waiting list action plan aims to deliver urgent and additional capacity to treat 1.7 mllion people as well as investing longer term reforms to bring sustained reductions in waiting lists. This is the first year of the multi-annual reform programme."